Guard watches coast for oil slick's first wave

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Why doesn't Obama just give this oil skimming ship a free pass by executive order. The EPA has not given it the OK to skim the oil and they also are holding it up because it does not fly an American flag. Here is the part of the article where Obama could step in and let this ship start sucking up oil.


"A large-scale disaster needs a large-scale solution," Su told a crowd of reporters, shipping executives and regulators.

A Whale could handle 500,000 barrels of oily water a day, or slightly less than what all the skimmers now in the Gulf have gathered in more than 60 days on the job, Su said.

A no-brainer? Not quite.

Because the vessel is Taiwanese and was built in South Korea, it needs an exemption from the Jones Act, a federal law requiring commercial ships doing business in U.S. coastal waters to be American-flagged.

Then there are environmental concerns. Because the ship would discharge water back into the Gulf, albeit after much of the oil had been skimmed away, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must go along with the deal.

Compounding the problem is that A Whale has never actually processed oily water before - though it did pass a recent test in Portugal, where a foaming agent was sucked into the ship's bowels at sea and "did quite nicely," said Bob Grantham, an executive with TMT Group.


Massive oil-skimming ship makes stop in Norfolk | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com